2006

Bert Simmons’ sickly face stares up from a hospital bed in a spacious room. Nearby, a baby in a white onesie lies in an infant warmer unit. “They’re not very beautiful,” laughs Nancy Tucker, chair of the Pacific Union College nursing department, as she looks at the two $30,000 manikins in the nursing Simulation Lab. The adult patient simulator arrived in August of 2005 and took up residence in a space that is now called the Simulation Lab. The lab has undergone a series of developments and improvements, including the recent addition of the SimBaby infant manikin. The purpose of this area is to provide a realistic hospital setting in which students can practice their nursing skills on high-tech manikins—a resource that nursing programs are utilizing more and more as clinical time in hospitals is harder to come by. “We feel that this is the wave of the future,” says Tucker. The lab houses the manikins in hospital beds, their compressors and monitors, and a control room on the other side of a one-way window, where instructors manipulate the manikin’s reactions, including changes in heart rate, respiration, and vocal responses. The lab space also includes a mock nurses’ station set...

The cell phone users of Angwin are no longer limited to having phone conversations (if they’re lucky enough to get one or two bars of service) at the airport parking lot. A Verizon Wireless antenna has been installed on the tower by PUC’s Nichol Hall, providing coverage in most areas in a roughly one-mile radius. Getting the antenna in Angwin was a lengthy process. PUC approached Verizon about obtaining a cell site in the area, and an agreement was signed in the summer of 2005, after which Verizon’s third-party site-acquisition and construction management company went through the process of checking out the location, creating a proposal for the equipment facilities, and obtaining a building permit from Napa County. Verizon utilized the tower already in place at the top of the campus but had to make structural changes such as reinforcing the foundation, removing lead paint and repainting the tower, installing the new antenna, and building facilities for the equipment that runs the antenna. They also landscaped around this new control facility. Official completion day was November 3, 2006. People around campus and town were incredulous when the word began to spread that you could get cell phone reception in the...

December always brings an influx of holiday festivities to the campus, including several annual events. The first weekend in December featured several of these, including the Christmas Tree Lighting and the women’s Christmas open house. Following vespers on Friday, students gathered on the campus mall in front of the Nelson Memorial Library for the annual Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony. PUC president Richard Osborn led in the countdown to the tree lighting. Students held lit candles in the dark as they sang Christmas carols and sipped hot beverages, provided by the alumni department, to combat the winter temperatures. On Sunday evening, the womens dormitories were warm with Christmas lights, visitors’ voices, and the smells of holiday goodies. The lobbies and dorms were decked out with their annual array of Christmas finery, and many girls had taken time to make their halls, doors, and rooms especially festive for the yearly women’s dorms Christmas open house. Teachers, community members, and (most importantly) gentlemen could wander through the dorms visiting with residents, sampling the goodies, or critiquing the decorating schemes. Vice president for advancement Pam Sadler, who was the judge for the door-decorating contest in McReynolds Hall, spent some time in all four dorms....

PUC chaplain Roy Ice has started a new podcast called Salvation Coach, providing “a workout for your soul.” The goal of this life coaching program is not to discuss complex theological issues, but rather to help listeners find concrete answers to questions about a relationship with God. Ice sees a need for people today, especially young people, to find relevance and realness in their Christianity: “I think this generation is finally coming to the question – and they’re brazen and bold and released enough by the previous generation to ask the question – is it real? It’s allowing them to truly prove what we’ve known all along: That this spiritual undercurrent has to be present in everything that they do, whether it’s their social life or whatever.” On each Salvation Coach episode, Pastor Ice addresses issues facing contemporary Christians in real life. His first set of podcast programs is titled “Twelve Things to Try While You’re Still Mortal” and features such topics as forgiveness and avoiding “get spiritual quick” diets. Ice posts the episodes at the podcast’s website, www.salvationcoach.com, with brief text introductions and lists of key verses. Listeners can subscribe to the Salvation Coach podcast or download episodes individually....

On November 18, 2006, Pacific Union College faculty members Daneen Akers and Stephen Eyer premiered their documentary film Living with Fibromyalgia at Chapman University’s Folino Theatre in Orange, California. More than 150 people attended the showing, which was hosted by the National Fibromyalgia Association (NFA). Akers and Eyer, who are married, were first introduced to fibromyalgia when Akers’ mother was diagnosed with it in 2001. Watching their family hunt for good information and struggle with the implications of a chronic illness convinced the couple to make a film in order to help others dealing with the same situation. The filmmakers sold their house in San Diego to finance the documentary, and then they spent the next two years researching, filming, and in production. The finished film features Akers as she tries to understand her mother’s illness, characterized by widespread pain and fatigue. She interviews her mother and six other patients, as well as doctors and health-care providers. “I didn’t originally think I would be in the film,” Akers said. “But it ended up making sense—it really was our family that was the motivation for the film.” Response to the documentary has been overwhelmingly positive. Lynne Matallana, president and founder of...

The annual Fall Festival was held in PUC’s Pacific Auditorium on Sunday, November 5. The Asian Student Association, business club, French club, Polynesian club and many others took part in the event which raised funds for the respective clubs and provided students with the opportunity to sample ethnic cuisine from various regions of the world as well as enjoy other non-gastronomic forms of entertainment. One of the largest attractions of the festival was the “Islands of Polynesia” show, presented several times throughout the night by the Polynesian club. Cultural dances of Tahiti, Samoa, Fiji, Hawai’i and New Zealand were performed by student-members of the club who graciously offered dancing instruction to several members of the crowd during each show. Also present for the afternoon and evening festivities were approximately 350 high school seniors from 16 academies in California and Hawaii. The prospective students were invited to PUC for the weekend and given the opportunity to experience the spiritual, academic and social activities that the campus offers. Tyler Len, a senior from Hawaiian Mission Academy and the brother of junior aviation major Chris Len, particularly enjoyed the Polynesian club’s show. “It was really well done. Everybody looked like they were having...

On October 24, 2006, the Napa County Board of Supervisors presented a proclamation to Pacific Union College for the celebration of its 125th anniversary. Richard Osborn, president of PUC, and John Collins, vice president for financial administration, accepted the framed proclamation from Supervisor Bill Dodd at a Board of Supervisors meeting in Napa. Pam Sadler, vice president of advancement, and Herb Ford, professor emeritus, also attended the presentation. PUC was established in Healdsburg in 1882 but moved to Angwin in 1909. PUC is Napa County’s only four-year college. More than 1,000 graduates currently occupy positions of service in the county. PROCLAMATION WHEREAS, academic classes commenced in early 1882 in Healdsburg, California, for an educational institution that has today become known as Pacific Union College, and that in its 2006-2007 academic year is celebrating its 125th anniversary; and WHEREAS, the college in 1909 moved its campus from Healdsburg to Angwin in Napa County, with classes commencing on September 19, 1909, in buildings of Edwin Angwin’s former widely known resort; the resort had been built on “the best 200 acres” of George Yount’s 4,400-acre La Jota land grant that included all of Howell Mountain; and WHEREAS, Pacific Union College has grown from...

Following his graduation from PUC in 1993 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, Scot Blackburn decided to test his skills in the business world. His efforts paid off, and the result, is an award-winning strategy-meets-trivia board game he named Brain Chain. Brain Chain was co-created with current PUC Campus Chaplain Roy Ice, Kris Harter (Columbia Union graduate) and Brigit Warner (Southwestern graduate and Santa Rosa resident). Recently, Games Magazine honored Brain Chain as one of the 100 best board games. Blackburn credits his PUC education with a large part of this success. “Creating a game was a lot of fun, and Pacific Union gave me the tools I needed to succeed and the confidence to use them,” say Blackburn. He specifically credits professors Kopitzke, Voth, Neergaard, Hardcastle and Toledo with not only his understanding of the theoretical and practical business world, but instilling in him the confidence and drive to be an entrepreneur. “Although PUC does not yet have the name recognition as Harvard or Wharton, I was pleasantly surprised with the instant respect I, as a PUC graduate, was accorded within the business world.” Blackburn also credits current PUC Campus Chaplain Roy Ice and other Seventh-Day Adventist University...

Pacific Union College’s annual Phonathon kicked off on October 9 and will run for five evenings a week until December 7. A total of 34 students are staffing the phones in order to reach this year’s goal of $165,000, an amount that will be allocated to scholarships, residence hall renovation, and faculty development through PUC’s annual fund.
The generous support from alumni has Phonathon on track to meet its goal, and Tonya Kamaloni of the alumni and advancement office is confident of the program’s success. “We have been receiving a steady number of gifts each evening and are optimistic that this generosity will continue over the next seven weeks so we can reach our goal of $165,000,” says Kamaloni.
Phonathon was originally supported by faculty and staff volunteers. Twenty phone lines were set up in the side rooms of the cafeteria where the first Phonathon workers made their calls. Now entering its 31st year, Phonathon employs nearly twice the number of callers and has become a student-driven affair, a characteristic unique to the college’s fundraising campaigns, and one that provides the students with an opportunity to directly contribute to supporting PUC and its future....

In April, a high school student, who had been hiding her pregnancy, delivered her baby in a bathtub, cut her own umbilical cord, and then proceeded to wrap her baby in a plastic bag. The infant was later found dead under her bed. It is a horrific crime but one that is not uncommon. Each year, an alarming number of young women, hide their pregnancies, then abandon their newborn babies. While many infants survive, others have encountered devastating fates. The situation is especially tragic considering there is a law in place to protect those unwanted babies. Since 2001, the safe surrender law (also called Safe Haven or Safely Surrendered Baby) allows parents to anonymously give a newborn to a hospital, police or fire station within 72 hours of the baby’s birth, without criminal implications. The problem is that the majority of young people don’t know the law exists. “A lot of education has gone to health-care workers and adult audiences,” says Jaynie Boren, vice president for strategic planning and business development at San Antonio Community Hospital. “What’s been missing is information geared toward junior high, high school, and college audiences.” But all that is about to change. This past summer,...